Yellow chert with cinnamon swirls,
Flint and jade serpentine
Put a shine on my
Pick-axe
When I dug your grave today.
There was no other place,
For this is your rise,
Your swell
Beneath a young valley oak
With the ranch resting
In the lap of these hills.
You came here to see the new barley
And Penny’s tomatoes -
Plump as babies’ bottoms -
And grandbabies grown,
Rolling downhill through lupine,
Through scarlet owl clover.
To thump against the garden fence,
Making the tomatoes dance.
If souls have duty
Beyond death,
Then yours
Is here.

Robert Walton retired from teaching after nearly forty years. He is also an experienced climber and mountaineer who has climbed in Yosemite, the Sierras and, especially, Pinnacles National Monument, his "home crags.” Robert writes fiction as well as poetry; his novel,Dawn Drums, won first place in the 2014 Arizona Authors Association's literary contest, as well as the 2014 Tony Hillerman Best Fiction Award. Learn more about himhere.